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Column for October 12, 2004
Probably the most beautiful building in downtown Flint is the 76-year-old Capitol Theatre Building, which was designed by the world-renowned theater architect John Eberson (1875-1955). Eberson pioneered the atmospheric theater design in which the theater simulated an outdoor patio indoors complete with stars (actually light bulbs) and clouds (projected by ‘cloud machines’) with lighting which depicted a sunset to start the show and a sunrise to end the show. The Capitol is a classic Eberson atmospheric theater with an Italian renaissance motif to bring, as the opening night program stated, "a touch of Italy transferred in its seductive charms to the City of Flint." Sitting in the Capitol Theatre, it was as if you were in the patio of an old Italian garden under a Mediterranean night sky.
It was first conceived by J. Bradford Pengelly who bought the property the Capitol sits on today in 1923. It had previously been the site of the Bachtel "10 cent sheds" (where you could leave your horse all day for a dime). By that time, automobiles had replaced horses on downtown Flint streets. Pengelly’s group (which also included Arthur M. Davison, John L. Pierce and Edwin W. Atwood) got together with theater chain owner Walter S. Butterfield and together they formed the Flint Capitol Building Company in March 1924 which began building the three-story building housing a theater, arcade, stores, offices and a basement bowling alley in April of 1927. Legal hassles involving getting clear title to the property delayed construction until that time and the theater opened on Thursday, January 19, 1928.
W. S. Butterfield Theatres operated the theater from day one until it first closed in 1976. Butterfield Theatres remuddled the theater in 1957 by modernizing the lobby, removing much of the inside ornamentation and repainted the theater battleship gray. An addition to the third story (with less ornamentation compared to the rest of the facade) was also built.
Flint area grocer George Farah bought the Capitol Theatre Building from the
Windiate-Pierce-Davison Company, which ran the Flint Capitol Building Company,
in 1977 and he, along with at least three other people who leased the theater
from Farah over the years, tried unsuccessfully to run the theater. It was
last used in the 1990s for punk rock shows in the theater, the lobby and
in the former bowling alley space in the basement which was called "The Fallout
Shelter." A bar was also in business in the lobby appropriately called "The
Lobby." The Farah family had been doing archeological demolition of the remuddled
space to reveal hidden plaster details. But a full restoration would cost
between $15 million and $20 million. The Farah family does not have the money
so they have been working on fixing the theater in phases. They received
approval in March of 2004 from the Flint Historic District Commission to
make necessary repairs and received a matching grant of $50,000 from the
Ruth Mott Foundation to make exterior repairs budgeted at $100,000. 
Repairs began in late August with the removal and replacement of water damaged
brick from the east exterior wall of the auditorium. Work then shifted to
the
west wall of the theater along Brush Alley replacing most of the water damaged
brick on that wall. When repairs to the auditorium brickwork is finished,
the repaired walls will be repainted. As I type this, work is underway repairing
the original canopy over the arcade and office building entrance along Harrison
Street, stripping the rusting canopy to bare metal and patching the most
deteriorated portions of the canopy. Also planned is repairing the vertical
sign which is original to the theater but was altered in the 1957 remuddling.
I’m continuing to monitor the progress of the theater’s repairs
and I’ve taken almost 50 photos as I type this. I’ve also been
submitting reports on the progress of repairs to the highly-recommended
http://www.cinematreasures.com
web site and they occasionally use my reports in the theater news section
of the web site. There are plenty of relevant links about the Capitol Theatre in Flint MI and among the most noteworthy are:
http://www.whatsupdowntown.com/capital.asp
http://www.roweincorp.com/focusweb/CapitolTheatre/capitol_theater.htm
http://cinematreasures.org/theater/811/
http://www.cinematour.com/tour.php?db=us&id=12668
http://www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com/MI/Genesee/state.html includes the Capitol’s listing in the National Register of Historic Places.
Also the following links about architect John Eberson: http://www.cayuganet.org/arts/schine/past/eberson.html has an Eberson biography http://www.design.upenn.edu/archives/majorcollections/eberson.html is for the University of Pennsylvania’s John Eberson collection. Also http://www.neo.rr.com/Civic/html/john_eberson.html which is another biography.
This is the first of three planned columns about downtown Flint landmarks. The next two columns will be about landmarks which have become symbols of Flint and the next column will be about a part of the downtown Flint street scape which was a part of Flint’s past and has returned to be a part of Flint’s present.
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